House Beautiful: It's all about the views

The Brentwood Bay house sits on the property "like it grew from a seed," says home designer Jim Grieve. The house was built by Griffin Properties.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

The dramatic front entry features soaring verticals, wave patterns in the floor, a round window and sugar scoop barrel roof. The light fixture hanging in the entry is all circles and ovals, frozen in metal. "We looked at thousands of lights before we found this one," said homeowner Karen Philbrook.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

"The kitchen and dining room are the driving force, the living soul of the house," says home designer Jim Grieve. He describes the kitchen as "hot-rodded assemblage," where plain-Jane Ikea cabinetry meets custom mouldings.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

The fireplace hearth and mantle look like a sculpture and were cast by Barry Philbook, who preferred not to spend $5,000 to have it custom made. In a sweep of curved glass, the second-floor balcony overlooks the living room and offers a view of the beachside patio.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

The living room has a contemporary feel. The curved windows sit below a barrel roof similar to one at the front door.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

Light floods into the living room through large windows that look out to the ocean. The oak floors are pre-finished, adzed (rough-hewn), five-inch-wide planks.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

Window sills in the home are varnished Douglas fir, paying homage to boating brightwork, and an ideal foil for the metal and glass railing along the second-floor hallway.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

The home's office is made for daydreaming, with expansive views of Brentwood Bay and a balcony that extends the work (and dreaming) space outdoors.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

Like the rest of the house, the second-floor guest bedroom features a colour scheme that reflects the natural environment and a picture window that frames an ocean view.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

An easy chair offers an inviting spot to relax and enjoy views from the master bedroom.France Litman
/ Victoria Times Colonist

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Barry Philbrook has been messing about in boats his whole life. He and his wife Karen spent five years sailing around the South Pacific in their 56-foot catamaran.

So it's small wonder that, when this seafaring duo decided to step ashore, they wanted to live by the water and enjoy a home with a distinctly maritime flavour.

"I'm getting too old now for all this sailing - I'm in my 75th year - so the boat's up for sale," said Barry. "But I've always lived on the water, and I'm a view person. I also like the rustic look, post-and-beam construction."

All this was an easy read for Jim Grieve, the only designer Barry would consider when it came to hanging up his wet-weather gear and becoming a landlubber. "Jim is one of those incredible people who's not just brilliant, but great to work with."

Barry's instructions to Grieve were basic: "Just go for it" - and the result is New York loft meets West Coast beach cottage.

"It was a luxury having known Barry for so long because there was not a lot of second guessing," recalled Grieve, who also designed the family's Blue Peter restaurant in Sidney in the mid-1980s.

The task began with demolition of the early 1970s bungalow, which the Philbrooks had bought in 2007.

"To fit on the site, we had to keep to most of the original footprint and use the existing foundation," said Grieve, noting additions had to adhere to complicated setbacks, so the process took many months and a number of council and board of variance meetings.

Karen says her husband wanted Grieve to design a home that would pay tribute to his family's boat building history.

The result is a contemporary house with a nautical twist, seen in everything from portholes and barrel vaults to sturdy railings, adzed (rough-hewn) wood floors and soaring mast-like elements.

The designer calls it a relaxed take on a traditional beach house. "It has modernist elements, but with many traditional antecedents that crop up almost in an unconscious way," such as curving window contours that harken back to Roman times.

The 3,500-square-foot Brentwood Bay home stands on a small point offering both south and west exposure, and was built with restraint in mind.

All the kitchen cabinets are from Ikea, but you'd never know it, as Grieve designed additional moulding profiles with a slim band of decorative ebony.

A team Griffin Properties, which built the house, cut and assembled all the pieces to give the kitchen its custom look, and echoed the profiles in door and window casings.

The range hood started out as a stock structure but has plenty of design panache, since the Griffin crew added a housing above that includes curved stainless and custom millwork.

Karen assembled the pre-fab cabinets and Barry did lots of finishing. He started woodworking at age 14, making furniture and doing home renovations and displays for HBC store windows. Later, he and his father started Philbrooks Boatyard in Sidney, specializing in everything from deluxe yachts to fisheries patrol vessels.

Grieve joked that the original house had a postage stamp-sized kitchen "made by a misogynist," but the new space is open, relaxed and highly functional. Extra features include a pot-filler faucet over the stove and ready-to-fill crab pots or salmon poachers.

Most of the floors are adzed (rough-hewn) planks that resemble rippling water or wave-patterned carpet. In the kitchen, he used 16-inch floor tiles. They look like ceramic but are "bullet-proof vinyl," and unlike some kitchens with miles of countertops and acres of work islands, this has a modest feel despite the spacious dimensions.

Karen notes a friend's island is so huge, she can't wipe the middle of it. Grieve is quick to quip: "This kitchen doesn't look like the owner got a deal on granite."

The space is brilliantly zoned, with each section catering to a different function: a "hot" wall for ovens and a range, a cleanup area with sink and dishwasher, a refrigeration and coffee bar, a phone station and a pantry. The prep area is a work island with two surfaces: maple butcher block on one side and black, honed granite on the other. The dining room side was finished by Barry to look like a piece of furniture.

The master bedroom and ensuite are on the main floor and upstairs are a guest bedroom and office, laid out roughly in the shape of a grand piano, with a corner balcony jutting like the prow of a ship on one side and, on the other, a large sweep of curved glass overlooking the living room.

"This gave everybody fits," Grieve said, with a chuckle. "Barry made the railing itself and it only took two pieces of curved glass, but a lot of people were involved to achieve this effect."

Down below, the fireplace repeats the same swept curve. Barry was appalled when he heard it would cost $5,000 to create a custom mantle and hearth, so he cast it himself - "I said forget it, I'll go buy a sack of concrete and mix something up myself.' " The exposed aggregate looks like a piece of beach frozen in time.

Each room flows into the next; stunning views spill though every window. Barry can watch diving birds, swimming underwater almost below his feet.

The high-ceilinged entrance and vertical columns encourage the eye to travel up, like a sailor shimmying aloft, and the interplay of textures and materials tantalizes the senses.

Grieve worked with designer Susan Coleman on colours: "She is almost mystical in her ability and, like a hunting dog, always works best if you just sit back and let her run."

But he was careful never to run away with cost himself. "We were quite restrained with expenditures and accomplished the end without undue ornamentation, unlike some homes I've done recently that are cranked up to the nines."

Doing a small house can be more demanding in many ways than a large one, because the solutions are more innovative, said Grieve, who has designed residences in Jakarta, Mexico, California and upIsland, as well as townhouses in Oak Bay and seaside mansions up to 10,000 square feet on the Peninsula. Seldom seen and generally high-end, they are informed both by traditional and contemporary thinking.

"The neatest part is this work dovetails with my own personal quirks. I like problem solving and participating with people who are enthusiastically pursuing their dreams."

In the Philbrook home, colour designer Sue Coleman chose mossy green for the exterior walls with rust trim, inspired by the arbutus trees.

And inside, "because blues, greens and greys don't work well beside the ocean," she took her cues from the natural rock outcroppings, and added a few bright hues to enhance rather than blend with the setting.

"I always choose colour depending on a location - and the setting here is so beautiful, it's a warm pocket of heaven - but colour should also reflect the clients and, because Barry and Karen are so warm, we decided to add some spice."

Coleman included warm, foodie colours such as a Dijon mustard shade in the living room, "almost a saddle brown," and a scorching paint called Louisiana Hot Sauce in the powder room, but treated the chimney with a bleached driftwood tone.

"I like to use complex, saturated colours that are non spe-cific. People will look at it and ask: Is it green, grey, beige?"

For the baseboards, Coleman used off-white. Her favourite shade looks slightly "brown, grey, blah in a paint chip," but is perfect when applied next to warm tones.

"White is too blue and it looks cheap, whereas this looks rich."

She and Grieve have worked together for almost three decades.

"Jim is a genius, although he maintains he has a magic pen, and that it's all in the pen.

"The fact is he is incredibly clever. He listens to what people are saying and interprets what they are not saying. He is a fabulous problem solver who can think on his feet and has more flair than guys who charge five times as much for a fraction of the sizzle.

"He takes something average and knows how to ramp it up with little things like a shadow line, or a quarter round in an unexpected place."

housebeautiful@timescolonist.com

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House Beautiful: It's all about the views

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